Speaking as One Friend to Another: On the Mystical Way Forward

Synopsis

Do Quakers require a radical mutation in their consciousness?

About the Author(s)

John Yungblut was born in Dayton, Kentucky, in 1913. He studied at the Harvard and Episcopal Divinity Schools before spending twenty years in the ministry. Shortly after ordination, he joined the Wider Quaker Fellowship, where Rufus Jones encouraged him to study the mystical aspects of Quakerism. He did so, and also studied the approaches to psychology and mythology of Teilhard de Chardin and Jung. Ultimately, in 1960, he left the church for the Religious Society of Friends. At that time he was directing a “Mission to Isolated Liberals” in Mississippi and Louisiana for the American Friends Service Committee. He also served as Director of the Quaker House, Atlanta; Director of the International Student House, Washington, D. C.; Director of Studies at Pendle Hill; and Director of the Guild for Spiritual Guidance in Rye, New York. Yungblut wrote extensively on mysticism, Jung, the aging process and ecology. He continued to write and speak well into his seventies, even addressing his own experience living with an advanced form of Parkinson’s disease. John Yungblut died in 1995 at age 82 in Round Hill, Virginia.

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